1 November 2004

No more 2000s

If John Kerry wins the election, reasonably fair, reasonably square, then he becomes my President and your President.

If George Bush wins the election, reasonably fair, reasonably square, then he remains my President and your President.

This is my pledge, my promise, my what-have-you. It's written down, in black and white. Call me on it if I renege.

I ask everybody who reads this to do two things if they agree with me.

One, say it loud and say it proud, the winner of the 2004 election is my President, and whether I like him or not, whether I agree with him or not, I'm not going to be a Michael Moore-style flaming gasbag asshat about it.

Two, pass the link along. Send it to your friends, post it on your blog, whatever. It's important. We are one country, and we have to pull together whether we agree with one another or not.

Emphasis in the original. And consider it done, sir.

I may have my flaming gasbag asshat moments, but I'm damned if I want to see a repeat of last election's brouhaha, and I refuse to contribute to starting a new one.

Someone told me after the 1992 election that I needed to "give Clinton a chance." Deliberately misunderstanding them (because the sentiment is insipid and asinine), I retorted that Clinton was going to get his chance whether I gave him one or not: he was going to be the President.

I may have wanted him defeated at every turn, I may have rooted for his impeachment and removal from office, I may have slammed him and snarked at him and taken great joy in ridiculing him.

But I never denied that he was my president. To do so would have required that I deny America was my country.

A lot of people on my side of the aisle (but much farther away from it even than I) were willing to make that leap, and it disgusted me.

I was actually fairly enthusiastic about Clinton for about thirty, maybe forty-five minutes. I still think he had a few good ideas, though usually he'd cribbed them from the GOP and given them a 270-degree twist so they weren't immediately recognizable. If he hadn't had such a cavalier disregard for the rule of law he would have turned out pretty well.

One of the more perverse ironies is that MoveOn, the organization set up to encourage people to get over Clinton's legal woes, hence the name, is still spouting off the same "we wuz robbed" stuff from 2000 four years after the fact, which strikes me as a pretty lousy example of moving on.

And I am a Democrat, with some of the stereotypical characteristics thereof: I support wind power, I send dollars to public radio, and while I don't actually drive a Volvo, well, I could. But I also have a fierce sense of self, which precludes a lot of the party's infernal groupthink.